


Brotherhood

by 852_Prospect_Archivist



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-10
Updated: 2013-05-10
Packaged: 2017-12-11 01:16:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/792351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/852_Prospect_Archivist/pseuds/852_Prospect_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stephen pipes up this time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brotherhood

**Author's Note:**

> Henri, Stoddard, Daryl, Simon and even Naomi have all spoken in my ear, but I was quite surprised to hear Stephen talking late one evening. This is what he had to say.

## Brotherhood

by J M Griffin

Author's disclaimer: The Ellisons and the Sandburgs (et al)belong to Pet Fly. Can I help it if they keep talking to me?

* * *

Brotherhood  
By J. M. Griffin 

Jim walks away from me and I just stand there watching him go. Why we can't communicate; why he can't get past... the past, I don't know. Sometimes I think my older brother and I lived two entirely different boyhoods, even though we grew up under the same roof. Times like tonight, when the old anger boils out of him, I think he hates me. Sometimes I think I hate him. 

But then I remember what it was like to be his little brother and how he called me "Stevie" and protected me from the bullies and creeps that gave us hell. Now, as adults, we are both so closed off, I'm not even sure we are the same people we were as children. Somehow Jimmy Ellison and his brother, Stevie, grew up to be hard men who don't give a damn about anybody. But we didn't start that way. We weren't hard kids. We were just boys with no mom and an ass for a dad, and a housekeeper named Sally who loved us both. 

Suddenly, I can't leave things the way they are, so I hurry after him. Hell, it's been almost six months since that fiasco at the race track. Somehow, we should be able to find a way to be brothers again. I am almost to his truck when I realize someone is with him. His partner, Blair Sandburg. I have excellent hearing, nothing like Jimmy's, but way above the norm, so I stop and back up a bit until I'm behind one of the parking garage's cement supports and I listen to what they are saying. 

"Jim, Jim, calm down. Jeez, what did the creep say?" Sandburg's voice is low and smooth, with a hint of desperation. 

"Nothing, nothing, damn it." Jim's tone is muffled and raspy, almost as if he's in physical pain. 

"Wha...?" 

"It was me, Chief. I was the one who was a creep. He just wants to reconnect, but, I don't know, it's like this tape of all the arguments we had when we were both teenagers. All the fights started running in my head. The animosity, the constant back-biting competition, it all came roaring up." Jim's voice was shaking now and Sandburg was making soothing sounds. 

" Shh, Jim, shhhh. It's going to be okay. Don't think about it tonight. It's been a pisser of a week and you just need some down time. Let's go home. Come on, give me the keys. I'll drive." 

Jim must have given over the keys, because I heard them jingle and the truck doors open and slam shut. Then they drove away. 

I walked back to my own car, my brain running a mile a minute. 

* * *

"Sally, what would you say if I told you Jim has heightened senses and can see, hear, smell and taste better than any one in the world." 

Sally spun in her place in front of the stove, a look of astonishment on her face. "Shhhh, Stephen, you must not speak of it." 

It was my turn to be astonished. "Why not?" 

"Because the wrong people might hear and take your brother away." Sally said softly, looking at me with eyes wide with apprehension. 

"My brother is a grown man. He can take care of himself." I snorted. 

"Can he?" Sally's voice was even softer than before. 

"Yes, he can." I said stiffly. But I was beginning to doubt. 

* * *

Okay, so Sally knew, had probably always known. After all, she'd watched us grow up. Of course, she'd left to raise her own family when I was about twelve, so she'd been spared much of the anger and hostility of our teen years. She'd come back to work for my dad about ten years ago when her husband died. 

But she'd known. Which made me wonder how many others knew or at least suspected something. Jim had shut it down somehow after Bud died. Every once in a while, I'd see his senses spike, usually when he was under a lot of stress. By the time he was in high school, they seemed totally dormant. For a long time, I thought they were just something I dreamed up when I was a little kid. Big brothers often seem like supermen to younger brothers. I just figured I had imagined it all. But I hadn't and somewhere in the back of my brain, I knew I hadn't. 

Oh shit. I picked up the phone and dialed my brother's phone number. Sandburg answered. Whoa, so they lived together? How had I missed that? 

"Umm, hi. Is Jim there?" 

"Just a sec." Sandburg turned from the phone. "Hey, Jim, come get the phone. It's Stephen." There was background muttering. Sandburg had his hand over the mouthpiece, but it didn't block much. "Stephen, your brother. You're the Sentinel, so don't pretend you can't hear me." 

_Sentinel,_ so there's a name for it. 

"Ellison, here." 

"Jim, uh, it's Stephen. Look, seeing you by chance the other night made me realize we never get together by choice. So let's do that. Get together, I mean." Oh, smooth, Ellison, really smooth. 

"I don't know, Stephen. I don't want to keep fighting with you and it always seems to end up that way." 

"Look, Jim, I'm sorry about the other night. I didn't mean to be such a jerk. Can we try it again?" 

Jim was silent for a moment. I could hear him breathing on the other end of the line. "Okay. Blair says..." Jim took a deep breath. "Blair said to invite you to dinner sometime. How about tomorrow night around seven?" 

"Sure, okay, that's fine." I hadn't heard Sandburg say anything, so I figured they must have discussed this some time earlier. 

* * *

I made it to 852 Prospect a bit early and was surprised to find a note on the door. "Stephen," it read "go next door and get the key from Mrs. Zapatoshny in 309. I'll be back in a few. Blair." 

The little old lady in 309 gave me the key and I headed back to Jim's place. Jim and Blair's place seemed to be more correct. I grinned to myself as I went in. The smell of baked lasagna filled the air and, sure enough, when I set the wine I'd brought on the counter, I saw a casserole dish resting on hotpads on the counter top, covered with a towel. It was steaming hot, so Blair must have ducked out for something. Where Jim was, I had no idea, but at least I was expected. 

I didn't let my time alone in the loft go to waste and hot-footed it up the stairs to the upper level. It was obviously Jim's bedroom. And he was sharing it with someone who read anthropology magazines and was doing some sort of research on police societies, if the books stacked on the floor on the far side of the bed were any indication. I started to open the drawer to the bedside table and stopped myself, remembering the times I'd snooped through my brother's room when I was kid. I didn't have to open the drawer to know what was in it. I'd figured out my older brother was bisexual back when we were both teens. I hurried down the stairs before I was caught snooping. 

The front door opened while I was peering into the little downstairs bedroom. There was a desk and a bookshelf and a bed that hadn't been slept in for some time judging from the camping paraphernalia stacked on it. 

"Stephen," Blair called from the door as he took off his jacket. 

"Yeah," I said as I stepped back from the door of the little room. I crossed to the bar as Blair walked back into the kitchen. "You two are lovers, aren't you?" I blurted out. 

To his credit, Sandburg didn't even flinch. "Yes." He whisked a loaf of fresh french bread out of it's packaging and started to slather it with garlic butter. "That a problem for you?" 

I shook my head. "No. I just..." 

"Just what?" Sandburg looked at me with those earnest, blue eyes of his. 

"I think the Jim Ellison you know, isn't the one I know." 

The man gave me another piercing look and ducked back to the bread. "Maybe so, maybe not." 

"I don't think I know a damn thing about who my brother really is." 

I should have heard Jim rattle his key in the doorknob, but I didn't realize he was there until he stepped into the apartment. 

"Hey, Chief," he said to Blair. "Stephen." Jim walked over to me and we shook hands. Then we just stood there looking at one another. 

"Jim, I..." 

"Stephen..." 

We spoke at the same time and then neither of us could go on. 

"Well, damn." I said finally. Jim rubbed at the back of his neck in a gesture of unease I recognized from all those fights back when dad pitted us one against the other. 

"I tried to call you when you got back from Peru. I talked to a Colonel Oliver twice and he said he'd pass on my messages, but I never heard from you." I don't know what possessed me to blurt out such ancient history, but I did. 

Jim shot me a startled look. "Wha..." 

"I didn't hear from you, so when you came back to Cascade to live I figured you didn't care to see me." 

"Stephen, I didn't know. I never got any messages." 

"Oh, " I said quietly. God, at that moment I loved him and hated him. Loved him because he was my big brother, because as a kid, he'd protected me and I'd idolized him. Hated him because, even if he could chase off bullies, he couldn't chase off our father. Jim had run away to the army and left me with the old man. With no buffer between myself and our father's anger, I'd learned to despise people with a vengeance. 

I turned away from him then, so he wouldn't see my tears. "God dammit. Why'd you leave me all alone with him?" I ground out. 

"Oh my god." Jim sucked in his breath. "Stephen, I had to go. He was killing me. I figured he wouldn't be so hard on you with me gone. I thought he favored you and that things would be better without me there." 

"They were. Some. But I missed you, Jimmy." Even to myself I sounded like a little blubbering kid. 

"Stevie," Jim reached out and pulled me to his side as he'd done when we were kids and I was bawling away. "Shut up, brat. It's going to be okay." Jim used exactly the same words he'd used when we were eight and eleven. 

I took a deep breath and pulled it together. 

"Supper's on, " Sandburg called out and it gave us a chance to pull back from all the emotion and try to act normal. And by the end of the evening, when the wine and the bread and most of the lasagna were gone, the animosity was gone too. 

"Jim, Blair," I said as I was leaving, "You two come to my place next time and I'll treat you to some homemade Thai food." 

"Thai food? Great." Blair was licking his lips. 

"Stephen, I didn't know you could cook." Jim shook his head in mock wonder. 

"There are a number of things you don't know about me, brother." I sniped and Jim nodded his head and laughed. 

"Likewise," he said as we shook hands and I made my way out the door. 

I took a few steps and stopped, then aimed my hearing back behind me. 

"Hey, I think that went well." It was Sandburg's voice from just inside the closed door. 

"Yep, thanks to you." Jim said. 

"No, I think the two of you managed okay on your own." Blair sighed. "I always wanted a brother." 

There was the sound of a kiss, a smooch really, and I grinned. 

"Well, Chief, I'll share mine, okay?" My smile grew even wider and I started walking away because, by the sound of things, my brother and his lover were getting down to some serious business in there. And there are times when little brothers know they need to get lost. So I hurried down the hall away from them, but the smile on my face went with me. 

* * *

End

 


End file.
